Ferill is an Icelandic consulting company in engineering design and construction. The firm was founded in 1978 and employs 35 people.
Since 2008, a team of seven MEP (mechanical and plumbing) engineers based in Reykjavik have used MagiCAD for design work. Ingólfur Bachmann is a mechanical engineer who designs heating and ventilation systems. “Mostly we use MagiCAD for heating, piping and ventilation design – although we recently purchased the sprinkler calculations module,” Ingólfur said.
Ferill used MagiCAD to design a new airplane hangar at Keflavik Airport – an extended one, so big that it can accommodate three 737MAX airplanes at once. The new hangar was necessary due to the increase in the number of international flights coming into Iceland. The new hangar is 27m high, and the ground floor stretches across 10,500 square metres.
The airplane hangar also includes the biggest door that has ever been constructed in Iceland – a wall opening 65m across.
Some further statistics about the MEP elements:
- Foam sprinkler fans 23 pcs – 920 l/min.
- Sprinkler pumps 3 pcs – 21,160 l/min @ 9,1 bar
- Three heating systems, total 850 kW
- Heating panels 630 m
“The hangar is in operation now, and the testing of the sprinkler system that we designed was quite impressive,” Ingólfur said. “It was spectacular seeing the whole building covered in foam, up to two metres.”
The video of this test can be seen here »
Having a fireproof sprinkler system is just one of the unique MEP requirements in the airplane hangar. Keeping that enormous space heated, cooled, and ventilated all requires large equipment.
How did MagiCAD help the team of MEP designers?
“Having MagiCAD helped us when designing the pipe layout, and accommodating them around the steel structures,” Ingólfur said.
He continued, “We didn’t design the electrical systems, because we were in collaboration with another firm, but we were able to run MagiCAD’s IFC tool and run clash detection between our HVAC design and the steel structure designs. This only takes a matter of minutes.”
Did having MagiCAD save you time?
Ingólfur said, “Yes it has saved time just to be able to draw everything in 3D, with clash detection, and determining how we arrange things that you need to fit – sprinklers and heating panels, along with the steel structure.”
How many sprinkler heads were involved?
“It was a foam sprinkler system, water and foam concentrate are mixed,” said Ingolfur, “and a foam-water fan discharges the foam – like raining foam. We included 23 foam fan blowers in the drawings for the airplane hangar – and we used MagiCAD to draw it in the model.”
Have you used MagiCAD on any other projects?
Ingólfur said, “We use MagiCAD in 95 – 98% of our projects, so almost all our design work in HVAC is done in MagiCAD.”
What other projects are you working on now?
He said, “Presently I’m working on a hotel project in the centre of Reykjavik, taking an office building that was originally built in 1932 and other old adjacent buildings, and turning it into a large hotel. This involves demolishing part of the old structure and built extensions to it. There is also an old concert hall in the building – they’re demolishing that part and rebuild it in the exact original style from the 1950s.”
He went on, “This is a very complex project, in terms of the MEP requirements – designing all of the heating, piping, ventilation and sprinklers that are needed.”
What cost or time savings have MagiCAD delivered to you?
“I’ve been using MagiCAD since 2006, almost 12 years now, so for me, MagiCAD is saving me a lot of time,” said Ingólfur.
“Based on an old project that I completed in AutoCAD, where I had to fit the HVAC system, having MagiCAD saved me almost 50% of my time, from two days of work down to one day.”
“We will soon move to Revit, and having MagiCAD in Revit will hopefully save us even more time on our projects,” he concluded.